As you can tell from the screenshot the Logon dialog has focus and the password field has the cursor in it. What's next?

Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:47 am

SysOpSite Admin

Joined: 26 Nov 2006Posts: 6579

I asked whether developers can add debug messages to the logon utility. However, it is unclear if that can help, because it is the Windows logon service that is crashing and the cause of that isn't clear. Something is getting in the way, but what is it?

Thu Nov 03, 2011 1:55 am

miande

Joined: 21 Oct 2011Posts: 21Country: United States

I have discovered the issue! It required a clear understanding of how Windows Server OSs work. Below are links that clearly explain the details:

The setup is the Windows Server 2003 is a VM and I was using RDP to connect to this VM to setup third party software, the logon.exe, etc. Every time I connected to Windows 2003 it was logging me on to a SESSION (session 1, 2, 3, .... N) and NOT the CONSOLE (session 0). Therefore when I was testing the logon.exe it was acting as if it was passing (logon.exe log file) but actually it was failing (windows event log). Therefore to resolve the issue I had to RDP to Windows 2003 to the CONSOLE (session 0) and not a SESSION. The change required me to add the following line to my <Windows>.RDP file:

administrative session:i:1

There is an alternative way to resolve the issue (which is primarily found in the links above) and that is to run mstsc.exe with the /admin switch.

In conclusion after I could RDP to the Windows Server 2003 on the CONSOLE (session 0) I finally had successful results in unlocking the VM using logon.exe.

Thu Dec 01, 2011 1:03 pm

SysOpSite Admin

Joined: 26 Nov 2006Posts: 6579

Thanks a lot for your feedback! The information you posted would be very helpful to other people trying to automate the same process.